Chris Christie and me: The skinny on being fat

Commentary: Being overweight costs governors and journalists alike

Of course, I’m not the governor of New Jersey. Or even a Jersey resident. Instead, I’m a workaday journalist in New York. But I have one big thing in common with the man — literally.

I’m fat.

New Jersey Gov. Christie had weight-loss surgery

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Chris Christie underwent weight-reduction surgery earlier this year, a move that comes amid concerns about his health as he emerges as a national player in the Republican Party. Heather Haddon reports on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images

And I’ve paid a price for it — also literally. I’m talking about the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on a variety of weight-loss treatments, all of which never really proved effective — that is, until I finally found a more lasting solution in bariatric surgery. Is it any wonder that the weight-loss market is expected to hit $66 billion in 2013, according to Tampa-based research group Marketdata Enterprises — up from $58.5 billion six years ago?

But it goes beyond the financial aspect. I’m also talking the toll that obesity has taken on my physical (and mental) health. It’s hard to imagine that Chris Christie hasn’t paid a similar price.

So, it was interesting to hear the news today that Christie has sought out the same solution that I did a while back: gastric-band surgery (aka the Lap Band). As the governor told the New York Post: “I’ve struggled with this issue for 20 years. For me, this is about turning 50 and looking at my children and wanting to be there for them.”

I’ll turn 50 next year, so I totally relate. Indeed, it takes a fat man to understand another fat man. That’s because we inhabit a somewhat different world than fat women: They’ve arguably got a more difficult path, living in a society that demands a slim feminine look. A fat guy can settle into his skin, so to speak — laughing off his girth, letting strangers call him “big guy,” eating those second (and third) helpings with a kind of macho abandon. And even if his corpulence becomes a matter of public debate — unlike Christie, I’ve never had to do battle with a former White House doctor — he can still tell everyone to mind their own business. Or in Christie’s case, he can call the physician in question a “hack who wants five minutes on TV.”

But all the while the fat man still lives with a hidden shame of who he is — and a fear of what will become of him health-wise. Come to think of it, that could be a lot worse than worrying if you’ll ever fit into a size 4 dress.

Bloomberg

Chris Christie

Actually, it’s not really a contest between fat men and fat women — we’ve both got a challenging lot in life and we both have our own individual stories to tell. So here’s mine: I’ve been fat pretty much my entire 49 years on this planet — save for a period in adolescence through my early college years when a diet doctor got me to lose a chunk of weight and the loss somehow stuck. But by my senior year of college, the scale started tipping past 200 — about 20 lbs. above my ideal body weight. And as I began working and raising a family in my late 20s, I hit 250. By the time I was in my mid 40s and writing about food as my main gig (yes, I could eat for my job!), I reached an all-time high of 295 — well more than 100 lbs. over that ideal mark.

Did I try to diet? Of course I did. Which is why I also relate to Christie when he put it like this a few months ago: “If you talk to anybody who has struggled with their weight, what they will tell you is that every week, every month, every year, there is a plan.” You see, we’re not fat because we want to be. And please, don’t bring up the “w” word. You don’t get to be the governor of a major state — and a possible presidential candidate — without plenty of willpower. And I don’t think I lack willpower, either.

But for some of us, the siren song of food is just too great. Maybe we’re eating for psychological reasons. Or maybe we’ve simply got a more cultivated sense of taste. I don’t know and I suspect the governor doesn’t, either. We just like to eat. If you don’t get it, good for you. But like Christie, I’m tired of people — even well-intentioned people — thinking we’ve somehow gone through life unaware of the problem.

But what about the plan? Well, it’s always changing because a) there’s no magic pill; and b) we’re still hoping to find that magic pill. In my case, here’s a short list of what I tried over the years before I got banded: Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Slim-Fast, low-carb dieting, hi-carb dieting, Overeaters Anonymous, hypnotherapy, nutritional counseling and a few types of medications (though, thankfully, I somehow avoided Fen-Phen).

A big man's advice for Gov. Chris Christie

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MarketWatch's Charles Passy joins The News Hub to discuss what he and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have in common. Photo: AP

Of course, for all the weight-loss solutions available, truly effective ones are hard to come by. In my case, everything worked — for about 10-15 pounds worth of pounds shed. But ultimately, I couldn’t shake the desire to eat. I get it, Chris Christie. I really do.

But these days, I weigh just around 230 — my lowest since my 20s — and I’m on a solid path to lose even more. And it’s all because of the banding, a procedure that essentially limits the amount of food you can take in at a single time by tightening the opening of the stomach with an adjustable gastric band. Weight-loss surgery, which can easily run up to $30,000 (mine was fortunately covered by insurance), might seem like an option of last resort — it comes with potential for complications and, according to a 2012 study, a mortality risk of nearly 1% (meaning about 1 in 100 patients die from the procedure). But it’s an option that around 200,000 Americans pursue each year, according to the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery. (In 2000, that figure was just 36,700.)

Even then, I was hardly a poster boy for bariatric surgery — for the first couple of years following my procedure, I lost very little weight largely because I resisted getting the band adjustments I was supposed to get. (Hey, it meant I couldn’t eat those second and third helpings!) Naturally, this defeats the logic of having the surgery in the first place. But a fat man is going to do what a fat man is going to do.

So, what made me change course in this last year and start to drop some serious weight? The health thing. Meaning as I started looking ahead to my 50th birthday, I made a frank assessment of my situation: Both my cholesterol and blood pressure have been high, my knees have started to ache and my sleep has not always been so sound. The final straw came when I saw a cardiologist in 2012 for a quick evaluation in advance of some minor sinus surgery. He had no problems approving me for the surgery, but he told me almost exactly what former White House physician Dr. Connie Mariano told Christie: The weight is going to catch up with you and a heart attack could be in your near future.

Then again, it’s not just the health thing. I’m also tired of being called “big guy” by every third stranger I meet. (And the “big guy” stuff is pretty mild — when you’re fat, you’re occasionally subject to a cruelty that’s about on par with the worst sort of racism.) And I’m tired of being the butt of my own jokes. You see, that’s what us fat men do: Just like Chris Christie went on Letterman with a donut in hand, I’ve learned to laugh at myself at every turn. If someone asked how I became a food writer, I’d say that when an opening for such a position came up at my last newspaper, my editors looked around the room and picked the fattest person they could find. (Rim shot, please.) The truth was that I was well-qualified for the job — I may be a glutton, but I’m also a gourmet — but like most fat men, I’ve mastered the art of self-deprecation.

Of course, it’s one thing to be laughed at by the occasional stranger — or to laugh at yourself when you’re among a few friends and colleagues. It’s another to become something of our national fat man joke, as is the case with Christie. I still carry the stings of particularly nasty remarks made about my weight going back four decades. I can hardly imagine what it’s like to hear such remarks a million times every day.

My guess is that Christie could deal with the remarks, but he couldn’t ultimately deal with the toll his weight was taking on his body. I’m almost inclined to believe him when he says that the band surgery isn’t about losing the pounds in advance of a presidential bid. (To quote his exact comments to the New York Post: “It’s so much more important than that.”) When I walk around these days in my 230-lb. body, I’m amazed at the literal burden that’s been lifted — and how much more I’m able to accomplish. And I still have another 50 lbs. to lose!

But I also am careful not to preach: That’s the other part of the fat man thing — once a fat man, always a fat man. It’s not just that I know I can put the weight back on, even though the gastric band thankfully makes that a challenge. It’s also that I know it’s simply not easy — not for a governor, not for a food writer, not for, well, anyone with a weight problem. And guys may have their own particular struggle and may have to deal with the problem in an especially lonely way — you won’t find many men at a Weight Watchers meeting — but the struggle is the struggle. The thin man will never understand the fat man.

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